


A Time for Farewells

by Dragonie



Series: Better Days Coming [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Early in Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Past Character Death, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 12:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11082042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonie/pseuds/Dragonie
Summary: The Quincy survivors have been safely settled in Sanctuary, and the Commonwealth Minutemen are back in business. Now that they finally have some room to breathe, Mari has a request for Preston; one of quite a personal nature.Pre-relationship; set early in the game.





	A Time for Farewells

**A Time for Farewells**

 

                It was late afternoon in Sanctuary when Preston Garvey finally allowed himself a chance to rest, slumping down on one of the old, decaying benches (“picnic tables,” the General had called them) and watching the golden light play on the river as it flowed along under the Old  North Bridge. Truth be told, he wasn’t really used to taking a rest, but Sturges swore the new turrets the General had helped set up were reliable enough that his usual vigilant patrol wasn’t necessary. Preston hadn’t failed to notice the glint of concern in his friend’s eyes as he emphasised that last point, either. He knew the other Quincy survivors worried about him and his insistence on standing watch late into the night whenever he wasn’t out with the General, but he was so used to being on guard every minute of every day, looking out for Gunners and Mutants and raiders and Lord only knew what else the Wastes might throw at them, that he had to actively force himself to relax – and even that was no small task. Even now, he could feel his muscles twitching with the restless desire to get back up there, to stand guard, to do _something_ to make sure everyone was safe…

                Preston forced himself to take a deep breath. No, Sturges was right; for the first time since Quincy, they had somewhere safe to lay their heads. In the time since the General had first accompanied them here, Sanctuary had started to grow from a crumbling ruin into a promising little town. If he strained his ears, then he could just about hear the distant chugging of the new powered water pump over the burbling of the river; the General and Sturges had only just installed it yesterday. Crops of melon, gourds, and razorgrain were sprouting up in the old backyards, and Marcy had just sown some tato seeds the other day, repurposing old fence pickets to serve as planters (good old Commonwealth ingenuity, Preston thought with a touch of pride). A few new faces had heeded their broadcast and arrived to settle down, one even bringing a Brahmin in tow. There was talk of future trading posts, of supply chains, of setting up a first aid station and letting the Longs return to their old job. A faint smile crept across Preston’s face at the thought. When he looked at the burgeoning little community they’d built out of the ruins of the Old World, and all the promise it held, his heart swelled with hope in what felt like the first time in ages. The Minutemen were back in business.

                He was snapped out his reverie by the sight of Marisol Delgado – the General – walking towards him in the golden sunlight. She was dressed in her usual leather jacket and jeans, but her expression was unusually unsettled. Preston sat up quickly, suddenly worried.

                “General?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”

                “Preston.” She flashed him an uncertain smile. “No, uh, not exactly. I just – I need you to come with me for something.”

                “Of course, General.” Preston sprang to his feet in an instant. Sure, it was a pretty vague request, but she’d done so much for them, and for the Minutemen, already, and asked for nothing in return but help finding her son – which, honestly, he would have gladly done anyway. In a world where altruism was in short supply, and some days it seemed like people were only out for themselves, someone like the General was pretty damn special. She had that certain combination of caring and dogged determination he hadn’t seen since Hollis passed. To be quite frank, Preston wasn’t sure how he and the others could ever truly repay her. He suspected she didn’t fully realise just how much of a difference she’d made to them… to _him_. “You know that you can count on me for anything, right?”

                “Thanks, Preston.” There it was again, that uncomfortable smile, although this time there was a hint of relief in her eyes. “It’s this way. Follow me.”

                He wondered if there was some manual labour she needed an extra hand with, or a weak point in their defences that needed guarding, but to his surprise she led him out of Sanctuary and up into the hills beyond. He looked about curiously. What was on her mind? He knew that the Vault she’d come out of was around here somewhere, but he’d never been there himself; the General had insisted that there was nothing left to scavenge down there, and she herself never went near the place. Too many memories, Preston supposed; that was something he could understand all too well. He couldn’t imagine how it must feel for her, trying to build a settlement out of the ruins of her former home. She rarely spoke of it, but he’d seen a wistful look in her eye when she walked in the door of her old house, or when Codsworth was waxing nostalgic. There must be a lot she was keeping bottled up inside, Preston thought.

Though, he thought wryly, he was hardly one to talk.

                She stopped at an ancient chain link fence halfway up the hill. The gate lay on the ground a few feet away, having long rusted off its hinges. A pair of skeletons still clung to the wire with their bony fingers, jaws hanging open in a two-hundred-year-old scream. Preston shivered beneath his heavy duster. He’d seen a lot of bad things in his time with the Minutemen, but there was something so despondent about the Great War dead, even all these years later. The General stood there, staring at the bones, for a long time.

                “I saw these two,” she said, finally, “when we were rushing to the Vault. They were begging the guards to let them in, but they didn’t have a place reserved.”

                “So they just left them to die?” Preston said – well, he wished he could have said it was incredulously, but he’d seen far too much of the worst of people for that. “Bastards.”

                The General nodded, not taking her eyes off the bodies. She was silent, but he could guess what she was thinking: _That could have been me_. Finally, she wrenched her gaze away and continued up the hill.

                Preston had seen Vault 81 – or, at least, the outside of it – several years ago, but Vault 111 turned out to be very different; a large, flat concrete platform rather than a cave. As he took in the sight, the General headed into a small metal hut beside it, and before long he felt the ground vibrate beneath his worn boots to a mechanical hum from down below. The General emerged from the control pod and headed to the centre of the dais, beckoning for him to follow. He did so, dumbfounded, and nearly flinched in surprise when the ground started to sink beneath their feet.

                Oh. An elevator, huh?

                He felt kind of silly for his surprise, but luckily, the General didn’t seem to have noticed. She stared straight ahead into the darkness as the elevator descended, and even in the gloom, he could see her hands clenching and unclenching. It couldn’t be easy for her to come back down here, he supposed, and revisit what must have surely been one of the worst days of her life. Still, it made him a bit uneasy, truth be told, with how… _uncharacteristic_ her behaviour was. It wasn’t like her, to be so tight-lipped about a task; normally, she went through plans with him, seemed to value his counsel. It wasn’t like her, either, to look so grim; rare, too, to see her without a smile on her lips, even if her eyes were tired. He suspected she was quite like him, in that regard; the type to stay strong for others’ sake, no matter how much you felt like collapsing yourself. Just what the hell, Preston wondered, was happening here?

                The silence between them was heavy, the mechanical whirr of the elevator in the background the only thing audible as the platform slowly descended. He glanced overhead, once but seeing that tiny spot of sunlight grow smaller and smaller didn’t exactly make him feel any more comfortable here. The minutes felt like hours before it finally reached the bottom. Preston stared as the General plugged her Pip-Boy into a control panel and the Vault sprang to life, the heavy, gear-shaped door sliding aside with the sound of grinding stone. He had always been kind of curious what it was like inside one of these things. Beyond the thick door was a rather sparse entrance hall, weak white fluorescent lights flickering on as a mechanical walkway rattled across to meet them. He looked around, taking everything in, as the General led him through the entranceway. She didn’t even seem to glance to the side; he guessed she’d seen enough of this place to last a lifetime.

                The inside of the Vault was a thoroughly alien environment to Preston; stark and sterile beneath a thick layer of dust. The air was cool, and not as stuffy as he expected; he walked past a vent and felt a slight breeze on his face, sputtering intermittently from two centuries of neglect. He could hardly imagine living your whole life in these claustrophobic tunnels, never to see the sun – although, he supposed, the alternative might’ve been ending up like those skeletons halfway down the hill (imagine if _she’d_ … no, he didn’t want to imagine that). Anyway, if Vault 81 was anything like this, it was hard to see why they were so attached to the place.

                Still, the General had said that Vault 111 was no ordinary Vault; perhaps the others were more… homey. Hard for them not to be, really. Vault 81, at least, probably didn’t have skeletons in decaying Vault suits and lab coats scattered about the place ( _probably_ ; he’d never been, after all). Preston tried to recall the General’s offhand account of the mutiny that had happened here, while she herself stepped delicately over the bodies, sparing them no more than a quick, downcast look.

                To be honest, he was getting more and more worried as they passed through the ancient sliding door. After all that had happened here, what in the world would she want to come back for? Whatever it was, the General was one of the strongest people he knew; it must be something very serious indeed to put her in such a sombre mood.

                He followed her deeper into the Vault, a horrible awareness dawning upon him as he felt the chill in the air and shivered in his jacket (he tried not to think of the expression “cold as the grave”). There _was_ something that she’d left down here, after all… or rather, _someone_.

                Their breath turned to mist in the frigid air, hers coming out quick despite her fixed expression. Delicate patterns of frost had formed on the windows, behind which he could only make out faint, blocky shapes.

                Preston’s lips curled in horror when he first saw the pods, their occupants slumped over inside; two-hundred-year-old corpses preserved for eternity in a frozen mockery of freshness (perhaps, he thought, the skeletons weren’t so bad after all). He wished he could give all of them a proper send-off, not this macabre display, but there were far too many. In front of him, the General glanced from face to frosty face, and Preston was shocked to see the _hurt_ in her eyes, etched into the hard line of her mouth, and then he remembered with a jolt that these people must have been her neighbours, her _friends_ …

                God _damn_. How did she manage to keep it together? If he’d had to walk through a gallery of the people he’d lost at Quincy…

                Well, he kind of did, really, in his dreams.

                Preston shook his head angrily, trying to dispel the images that even now threatened to float up inside his head and haunt him once more. Right now, he was more worried about the General than himself. He chewed his lip, trying to think of some comforting words to say, something that would give her strength like she gave him. He’d never been the best at that, he thought, although he wished he was. When the General spoke to you, she could make you feel like you weren’t alone, make you believe in hope you thought you’d lost, and God, he admired that about her. He wished he could return the favour, but all the words he could think of at times like these seemed somehow lacking, felt like weak platitudes in his mind.

                He wasn’t surprised when she stopped in front of a pod at the far end of the room. He’d figured that’s what she’d come here for, although he still wasn’t exactly sure why she’d brought him along. Maybe she’d just wanted a friend to be there with her for this, and if that was the case, he felt quite touched that she’d asked him. Her husband’s head lolled down behind the glass, a trail of blood frozen to the side of his face below the bullet hole in his temple. His eyes were closed, Preston noticed, although he knew the man’s death was not a peaceful one; the General herself must have done it, he realised, and put him back on ice afterwards. She didn’t speak much about the man (Nate, Preston thought his name was) other than that he was in the army, and that he had died trying to protect their son. Preston hadn’t really known what to expect, although the lines of the man’s face were perhaps softer than he had imagined. He wetted his lips in the cold, dry air.

                “I’m so sorry, General,” he said carefully, as she continued to stare, jaw clenching, at her husband’s body. “Take all the time you need.”

                It took a few seconds for her to respond. Finally, she turned her head, and gave him a sad little smile that made his chest tighten in a rather unpleasant way.

                “No thank you, Preston,” she said. Her voice was kind, but weariness hung heavy on it like a shroud. “I just…” She bit her lip as her gaze returned to Nate’s face. “I want to give him a proper burial, you know? But I… I can’t carry him out myself.” Her voice cracked slightly, and Preston’s heart lurched unhappily at the unfamiliar vulnerability in her tone.

                “Of course!” he said quickly and, he hoped, reassuringly. “Leave it to me, General. I’ll make sure of it. It’s the least I could do.” Gingerly, he laid a gloved hand on her shoulder. She jerked in surprise at the sudden contact, but her shoulders quickly relaxed, and her face shifted into that sad smile once more.

                “Thank you, Preston.” She placed her hand tentatively atop his. Despite the chill, and his thick gloves, her touch felt warm. “You’re a good friend, and a good man. I hope you know that.” He felt a twinge of heat in his cheeks at her words, and didn’t point out the wetness forming at the corners of her eyes.

 

                ***

 

                They buried Nate under a tree down by the river, just outside of Sanctuary. While Preston carried the body down and borrowed a shovel from one of the garden plots, the General went to fetch Codsworth. She returned just as Preston had started to dig out the grave, with the robot floating mournfully beside her (and, for some reason, Dogmeat on her heels), his mechanical eyes somehow looking sorrowful. Well, she had said that Codsworth was part of the family, after all.

                “Please allow me, Mister Garvey,” he insisted, and took the shovel from Preston into his own metal arms, digging a six-foot hole with robotic efficiency. Dogmeat sat dutifully beside the grave as Preston lowered Nate in – perhaps Mama Murphy was right, and the pooch understood more than most – while Codsworth offered a despondent “I’m so sorry, mum,” to the General, who couldn’t tear her eyes away from the body. When all was done and dusted, Codsworth thanked Preston profusely – embarrassingly so – before floating off to resume his cleaning duties. The General scratched behind Dogmeat’s ears, still staring absently at the fresh dirt.

                “General?” Preston asked, concerned.

                “Hm?” She turned her head to look at him. “Oh, yes.” She gave Dogmeat a pat on the head. He licked her hand consolingly before trotting away. “Sorry to make you do that, Preston. I… wasn’t sure who to turn to, and I trust you, so I guess I…”

                “It’s okay,” he interrupted her. “You don’t have to apologise. Just glad I could help.”

                She shot him another smile; a bit stronger, this time.

                “Gotta say, I’m damn lucky to have a friend like you, Preston.”

                “Oh, uh… thanks.” He let out a little chuckle of embarrassment, and rubbed the back of his neck. Still, it was good to see her acting more like herself.

                “I mean it.” She paused for a bit, looking off into the middle distance. “You know…”

                “Hmm?”

                The General shuffled awkwardly, sucked a breath in through her teeth. He could see her face screw up with discomfort as she struggled to get the words out.

                “I was going to divorce him.” The words came out in a rush, followed by a visible slump as the tension left her shoulders. Preston guessed that the unspoken words had been weighing on her mind for some time now.

                To be honest, he was surprised. He’d never heard her say a bad word about Nate. Then again, she rarely talked about the man, and when she did it was with a kind of weary nostalgia. He had to admit, he’d been curious, but he hadn’t wanted to pry. He’d always assumed her reticence was due to her grief, but it seemed like the matter was rather more complicated than that.

                “You weren’t happy together?” He tried to sound more sympathetic than surprised; the last thing he wanted was for her to think he was judging her, or anything. He wasn’t exactly sure how divorce was handled, in the Old World, but he had to guess that it was a more serious matter back then than it was now. Hard for it not to be, really; folks here just kind of stopped living together if they no longer wanted to, and most people outside of Diamond City hadn’t bothered with a wedding ceremony in the first place. The General had explained to him once about courthouses and certificates and tax rates, and he had been frankly surprised that the pre-war world hadn’t drowned in an ocean of paperwork long before anyone could ever drop the bomb. Perhaps it explained all those building around the Commonwealth which seemed to exist to do nothing but.

                “We were, at first.” Her eyes were unfocused, reminiscing on some two-hundred-year-old memory. “High school sweethearts; went to senior prom together and everything. The whole nine yards. He was so kind and funny, back then.” There was a mournful kind of warmth in her eyes and voice. Preston nodded attentively, pretending that he had the faintest clue what a “senior prom” was.

                “Guess we married too young,” she continued, casting her gaze downwards, nudging at the dirt with the toe of her boot. “Didn’t give ourselves enough time to figure out who we really were. Didn’t realise how much we might change.”

                That, he understood. His own first relationship, with a boy from a neighbouring farm, hadn’t ended up surviving his enlistment with the Minutemen. At first, Ethan had laughed and kissed him, and said he’d look forward to seeing his soldier-boy come marching home. But when Preston was no longer a fresh-faced recruit, and came home quieter and with hollower eyes, and clammed up whenever Ethan asked for stories of his heroic exploits or wanted to know why he never laughed like he used to… Well, Preston knew very well that, no matter how much you love someone, sometimes you still grow apart.

                He wished he knew what to say. Fortunately, the General didn’t seem to be waiting on a response.

                “It really started to hit home after he joined the army,” she continued. “I told you how… how _messed up_ everything was, even before the war, right?” She looked at him, more animated than before. Preston wasn’t sure yet whether to take that as a good sign or bad.

                “Yeah, you said.” He glanced up at the decrepit houses of Sanctuary, their once-bright paint patchy and faded with weather and time. She’d told him, all right; about the food riots, the mass arrests, the show trials, the people disappearing in the middle of the night, the horrible rumoured camps… the posters on every street corner, and the flag on every mantelpiece _or else_ … He shivered. It wasn’t a cold evening. “I still can’t believe they got away with that.”

                “Hah,” she said. It was not a laugh. He mouth was twisted, as if she’d swallowed something dreadfully bitter. “Oh, they did more than get away with it. People loved it.”

                “Really?” Preston was aghast. How could anyone love _that_? Didn’t the old monuments talk about how America had fought to stay free?

                “Mm,” the General nodded. “Ate it right up. Well, I guess some were just going with it out of fear, but some of them? Couldn’t get enough. Swallowed all the propaganda, believed that if we were at war, then any means were justified by the ends, no matter how fascistic.”

                She looked at the ground once more, shoulders slumping, seeming to deflate. “I never wanted Nate to enlist, you know? But he insisted, said that he wanted to protect his countrymen; there was a lot of rhetoric like that around. I was worried, but I thought… I thought since he was such a kind man, that _that_ , at least, wouldn’t change.” She looked back up at him, eyes imploring, although he wasn’t sure quite what for. He chewed his lip uncomfortably.

                “But it did?”

                “Yeah. It did.” Preston’s gut twisted. She sounded so _defeated_. He wanted to tell her, wanted to let her know that not everyone lost their kindness in the midst of the world’s ugliness. She was living proof of that. He hoped that he was, too. I guess surrounded by military guys, all that rampant nationalism… it started to rub off on him. He started to make excused for the government’s actions, started explaining awful things away as necessary evils, and I began to wonder where the kind man I married had gone. Sometimes, it felt like… like I was looking at a stranger…”

                She let out a choked sob, before wiping her eyes angrily. He politely averted his gaze.

                “I don’t think anyone could blame you for wanting to leave,” he said gently. “I certainly couldn’t.”

                She flashed him another sad smile through the tears.

                “Thanks, Preston. I was… I was gonna leave him, but then… I found out I was pregnant, and Nate got discharged, escaped from all that, and I thought… I thought maybe we could make it work–”

                She screwed up her face as the tears she’d tried to hold back finally spilled out.

                “Hey,” Preston said, reaching a hand out to clasp her shoulder. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

                He was not expecting her to collapse, sobbing, against his chest, hands grasping at his jacket, tears soaking his scarf, and yet that was exactly what she did. He froze for a second – it had been a long time, he’d just realised, since he’d had another human being so _close_ to him – but he recouped bravely, bringing his arms around her in a loose hug, not so tight that she couldn’t easily break out if this wasn’t what she wanted. It seemed to be, however, as she nestled deeper into his chest, crying freely. He rubbed her back in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion, gently murmuring “there, there”s and “I’m here for you”s and “let it all out”s. Eventually, the wracking sobs subsided, but even so, Mari didn’t move away, and so neither did he. He just stood there, holding her, until the last of the golden sunlight faded and darkness crept over the wastes.

 

                ***

 

                The next morning, she was back in top form, confidently poring over her Pip-Boy map with Mama Murphy. When she caught sight of Preston, she smiled, a little apologetically; her eyes, he noticed, were still red and puffy, but her smile reached them once more. He grinned back, glad to see her in better spirits, as he joined them to see what wild adventure Mari would lead him on this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! It's my first time writing Preston, and I hope I did him justice! He has a _very_ different voice from Ulysses or Jane, haha.
> 
> This was inspired by my own thoughts while playing the game; it didn't feel very in-character for Mari to just leave Nate's body lying around in the Vault, no matter how... complicated their marriage was. I reasoned that, at some point, she'd definitely want to give him a proper burial.
> 
> I hope to write more with these two in the future, perhaps some proper tooth-rotting fluff, and more of Mari being kickass and not so sad.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it!


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